IV&V • Assessment Services • Program and Project Management

zugzwang

A term used by chess players. Refers to a situation where any move you make worsens your current position. This certainly applies to project management. Consider staffing. If you project is behind and you add staff, your project will get further behind. If you don’t add staff, you lack the capacity to catch up and will stay behind. If the choices before you are poor, it is possible the circumstances will change if you wait a while. You do run the risk that you’ll lose momentum, and that is a substantial problem as well. But on occasion no action is the best action to take. Just not too often...

frogged

A knitting term, describing when a knitter is so frustrated with their work (wrong yarn, wrong pattern, wrong gauge, wrong tools, quality problems, wrong training….) they tear out some or all stitches and either start again or abandon the project altogether. To frog is to admit defeat with the current project and to move on to more productive efforts. An “aha” moment of clarity. An admission that the current path will not produce the desired result. In project management, there are moments of clarity that demand attention, so we can move on to more productive efforts. To frog is to find clarity.

slack

Also called Float. Slack is the amount of time that a task can slip before it causes a delay in completing the project. Slack is a good thing, it gives project teams some flexibility and time to deal with unexpected issues. Most good PM’s will build some slack into their schedules, without it, schedules are too rigid.